What's a Mother (in-law) to Do? by Jane Angelich

Author:Jane Angelich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2009-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Communicating with them in an open, honest fashion has made everyone’s life less stressful.

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Because I grew up in a family with only daughters, lots of lessons in family dynamics were new to me when I was blessed with sons. While it was second nature for me to call my parents to say hello, almost daily, my young adult sons call me much less frequently. And I’m absolutely fine with it…now. It wasn’t always that way. I counted their calling home as an obligation or responsibility of our rela tionship and felt insulted or hurt if their call frequency slipped. My sons view things completely differently. They behave just like my first husband, their father: they call when they have something to tell me, or they save up a few somethings until they have time to sit down and make the call. They phone me because they want to talk to me—not because they feel they need to check in.

In order to finally “get it,” I had to stop whining about wanting them to call me more, listen to their reasons for calling me less, and be content knowing that it meant more when they did phone. No more guilt trips for my sons about calling home! Communicating with them in an open, honest fashion has made everyone’s life less stressful.

I can only imagine how much this woman must hate a ringing phone after I read the following posting on the Internet:

My husband and I live in a guesthouse on her [the mother-in-law’s] property to help her pay her house payment. She will call ten times a day, and seven of the times it will be all about the same thing to make sure we understand.

For example, there is a light on the porch so we can see at night. If I have that light on for over five minutes, she will have her daughter call three to four times to tell me to turn it off, even though I am still using it. Then she will call her son at work to have him call me and ask me to turn it off. Finally, after all that, I have to call her to have her stop harassing me to turn off that light, and then she complains on the phone for ten minutes and hangs up on me like a little kid.

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